


Modern Prometheus

by BewareTheIdes15



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Codependency, M/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Mildly Dubious Consent, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Violent Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-26
Updated: 2014-11-26
Packaged: 2018-02-27 03:37:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2677592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BewareTheIdes15/pseuds/BewareTheIdes15
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Human memory is unreliable. Fallible. Easily diverted given the appropriate application of force.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Modern Prometheus

**Author's Note:**

> I have been working on this for far, FAR too long. Happy Thanksgiving?
> 
> Shoutout to triedunture who hand-held me through about eight versions of this and basically yelled "just finish it" at the sky for three months until I actually finished it.

**“The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality.”**

**― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein**

 

_Human memory is unreliable. Fallible. Easily diverted given the appropriate application of force._

_The only sound in the apartment is the creak of the kitchen chair as his weight shifts. “Were you?”_

_This is not the question he came here to ask._

***

“Frankenstein.” He’s not sure he meant to say that. It’s hard to modulate now, having the ability to say whatever he wants, whenever he wants. Having someone who will listen.

Having wants.

The t- Steve. Steve pauses in the middle of his push-up to look up at him, right arm locked, ruler-straight, left tucked behind his back.

Kick to the elbow, heel to the back of the neck, press, twist. Four moves, target neutralized.

The available information suggests that the workout is unnecessary for physical maintenance. Energy-burn, then. Steve has been visibly edgy. Pacing, cleaning. Steve has not left the apartment in the three days since his arrival.

A muscle in his left trapezius twitches, psychosomatic. Steve would be a sub-par sniper.

“Frankenstein,” he repeats to the frosty-hot demand of those eyes on his skin. “They called the monster that, but that was…”

He hears his voice taper off. Malfunction. The smell of stale popcorn and chocolate. Sweat. Young boys with caps on their heads. Blue eyes snowy in the flickering light. A fine-boned hand clutching tight to his wrist. Left wrist. Flesh.

“That was the name of its maker.” He is staring at his wrist where there is no cuff of spindly fingers. Hidden pistons whir as he turns it over, watches the plating shift in the spill of crisp afternoon light.

A hazy-bordered rectangle gleams against the wall, shrapnel-glints splitting off from it as he moves his fingers. It disappears when he shifts his arm into the shade of his body. Does it again, enthralled by the flashes against the wallpaper.

Flash-flash-flash.

Short-short-short, long-long-long, short-short-short.

“The monster had no name.”

***

_The world is watery ink and the buttered light from the front hall, the target a paper doll propped up in the center of it._

_“Was I what?” the target says._

_Twelve feet away. Less than 1.8 seconds to cover it at the speed the target can but is not moving with. Enough to react, counter. The target would move to debilitate, not destroy. Solar plexus, block with left, swing with right, kick knees, pin to table, knife. Six moves, target neutralized._

_Would. Theoretical. The difference between what is and what is not._

***

Don’t think, move. That was the first lesson, the most vital. Your mind will lag, weighing the options will betray you. Train your body and it will do what it has to long before your mind can decide.

It shouldn’t be a surprise he remembers so much more with his body than his mind.

“We used to share.”

Bubbly-edged pancakes sizzle when Steve flips them neatly, the same casual precision he wields the shield with.

Steve’s eyes are on him.

Stained-glass blue, a stun-gun zip straight up his spine. This is a sensation he enjoys. Possibly why he said something in the first place, to get Steve’s eyes on him. Motives.

“You were smaller. How did we share?”

He presses his nose to his shoulder again, right, not left; cotton worn skin-soft, drooping at the neckline even though none of Steve’s things can be more than a few years old. Inhales the chemical freshness of detergent overlaying soapy-clean skin. Neither the same as the kinds they used to use, brands probably long defunct or reformulated into nonexistence.

Still, he smells like Steve. Long nights in a shoebox apartment with blemished cream walls. Sweating, freezing. Clothes drying crispy in the sunlight. Warm skin, cold skin, so much time worrying about one or the other. Too hot or too cold. A wheezy chest. Blond hair prickling against his lips.

Steve smiles like a mangy dog hanging around the back of a butcher shop. Hungry. Wary. Hopeful.

“We got stuff in your size and I rolled the cuffs and girded my belt up.”

With a dull scrape - Gerber Mark II BA9 against the fourth lumbar - the spatula slides across the pan, lifting the pancakes onto a plate already stacked high with more food than two regular people would be able to eat in a sitting. More food than they used to see in a week in.

Steve keeps on feeding out memories like ticker tape. “I had a couple of suits and things for when I was looking for work, but I was never much on fashion. You always liked to look snazzy.”

He hacks off a generous pat of butter from the softening stick on the countertop, rubbing it around on top of the stack until the surface is gleaming, liquid butter dripping haphazardly down the sides. “Had to have something to impress the girls with, what with that bum face of yours and all.”

With a bump of his hip Steve shoos him toward the kitchen table.

Two chairs. There’s no evidence that anyone besides he and Steve have ever been in this apartment. There was another one, in DC, decommissioned. The table and chairs could be leftover from then. From Steve’s friends then, the bird and the Widow.

Still friends. Allies. Steve has been careful to keep this part of his life separate from the other, but there is a hive of awareness around him. Potential threats. People who would tear down the world to get at anything that hurt Steve.

This thought is something else he enjoys.

“Besides, I wasn’t that much smaller than you,” Steve huffs, piling food onto each of their plates.

As in many, his memory is deficient in this respect. He recalls Steve as a plucked bird - disproportion in fragile skin, propped up on hollow bones. But he was also smaller at the time. Less of him then, and more. Subjective.

In lieu of any of that - Steve takes the failures of his mind like those bullets on the helicarrier, expected and excruciating - he says, “I’ve seen the pictures.”

That’s true. He broke into the Smithsonian exhibit dozens of times before he broke into Steve’s life, black and white film reels and promotional photos more real in his head than most of the ninety some-odd years he’s walked the planet.

Steve shrugs, “The camera takes off two inches.”

Looks ready to reach across the table and hand feed him, so he picks up his fork - jugular, yank right, facilitate blood loss and counteract advanced metabolism; two moves, target neutralized - shovels an appeasing bite into his mouth.

Salt, sugar, something rich. Vanilla? Familiar.

The bottle of syrup growls against the tabletop as Steve slides it toward him. Glass bottle, less than ten pounds of force per square inch to shatter it into useable shards. Steve has no self-preservation instincts. Then again, when did he ever?

“So much for that porn career,” he says, pouring syrup in a perfect circle over his pancakes so there is some on every bite, just the way he likes it.

He’s never had pancakes before.

Steve chokes on the bite in his mouth. Possibly on air. Asthma. The copper twang of pennies warm from his hand, saved up for a salve, a spray. He could steal any inhaler from anywhere nowadays, no trouble, only Steve doesn’t need one anymore.

“Alright, that’s it,” Steve coughs, reaching for his glass of milk. He’s laughing through it, in his eyes if not his voice. Another thing to enjoy. “I’m setting up those parent controls on the TV.”

***

_“Were you,” he repeats. He does not have the word. Partners is inconclusive. Cultural euphemism. Lovers is a fist in his throat, calloused knuckles grinding his vocal chords bloody. “Fucking.”_

_The word is not new, shaped to his tongue like the gloves to his hands. Worn and beaten and molded through wear._

_He has never spoken it before._

_It surprises the left side of the target’s mouth, pops it up like a spark._

_Smirk. Smile. The target is smiling at him. This has never happened before either._

_This happens every day._

***

“Back when we were kids,” Steve says, the chipper, easy tone that’s half plea for Bucky to remember and half pity that he can’t, “we used to sleep in the same bed all the time.”

Rain titters at the window pane like gravel on an undercarriage - Istanbul, disco on the radio, air muggy as the inside of a mouth, something about an isotope - white noise that blots out the street below like the darkness blots out everything but the island of lamplight where Steve kneels on the floor between Bucky’s legs.

Bucky lifts his feet to let Steve pull the boxers all the way off. A spot of semen licks cool at his ankle in the process.

He is capable of this. Cleaning himself up. Self-maintenance is a necessary skill set for extended missions, injuries, situations that require blending in with civilians. He is not, because...

Steve tosses the underwear into the hamper in the corner - six foot shot, oblong projectile, dead center of the basket, without aiming. Steve would be a mediocre sniper.

He is not, because Steve will do it for him, so long as he plays helpless.

“It’d get cold, and my ma would let you sleepover instead’a sending you home.” The washcloth is warm, damp, like the hand Steve rests on Bucky’s thigh. ”And, you know, we were young, things would… come up in the middle of the night.”

Steve touches him without thinking. Is paradoxically cautious about it. Gentle with Bucky’s softened cock as he cleans the mess from his skin. Careful as he washes away the smears that were starting to dry along the crease of Bucky’s thigh. “Happens to everybody once in a while.”

The washcloth is warm, damp, like Steve’s mouth, which Bucky remembers even though he doesn’t. Even though he thinks he does.

The difference between what is and what is not.

“Least you didn’t get it on me this time,” Steve jokes. As if he can’t feel that Bucky is not softened anymore. Can’t see the swelling between his splayed legs, reaching toward his abdomen. Wanting from Steve’s eyes on him and Steve’s hands on his skin. The memory that never happened. That is real enough to make muscles jump and blood rush.

This is normal, Steve’s telling him. Sam’s telling him. Widow and the doctor who is not that kind of doctor but takes Bucky’s blood samples anyway are telling him.

Enhanced physiology, cessation of drug regimens, improved nutrition and physical care. Love maps. Effects of trauma. Psychosexual imprinting.

Normal, Bucky thinks. Excuses are normal.

***

_“You mean… You and me? Back-“ The target shakes his head, still smiling. “No. No, it wasn’t like that.”_

_He smells. Like a slum. Like an abattoir. Like the docks, with splinters in his fingers and a week’s wage in his pocket._

_He is sitting in the target’s kitchen and he smells. He was not aware of this before. He does not know why he is aware of it now._

_“He remembers your mouth.” He is being too insistent. This is not the question that matters. It is the only question that matters. “They wouldn’t have put it there.”_

_Shame. He is sitting in the target’s kitchen and he smells and he is ashamed._

***

Steve’s jumped-up basketball sneakers squeal on whatever kind of environmentally conscious, sustainably sourced, fair trade bullshit tile Stark’s got his tower floored in. There’d been a ten minute conversation about it.

Bucky’s not sure whether he wants to kill himself or everybody else in the room, but it’s definitely one or the other.

Timisoara. Wet stone and burned fryer oil. Burned flesh. His hand hurts. Right hand. He doesn’t have a left hand. He has a left hand, but it’s not, why isn’t it, how could it be- The man whimpers. Squeeze harder. Blood coating his left hand. His left hand doesn’t bleed. Wet slippery skin. Wet slippery stone.

Bucky needs to get out of here. Too bad Steve’s planted himself in front of the door.

The rest of the team is studiously quiet. Stark’s architecture probably has a dozen contingency measures he could launch with a hand signal. Banner would avoid getting involved if he could, minimize escalation. Sam’s not much of a threat at this distance, but there are eight weaponizable inanimates that Natasha could use, including the shattered pony neck bottle foaming on the floor, and Bucky’s not dumb enough to underestimate a sharp-shooter, even if the archer’s unarmed.

All of Steve’s nice, safe new friends.

Bucky always thought the government giving Steve a shield was equal parts absolute brilliance and the single greatest redundancy in human history. Steve’d been flinging himself headfirst into danger long before he had a hunk of metal of hide behind.

His laugh sounds like a snarl as he presses into Steve’s space.

On the list of things that are going to convince people he’s stable and safe to be around, this ranks pretty low. But hell, why lie?

Warm muscle shifts under tight cotton as he presses his hands to Steve’s shoulders, felt on the right, imagined on the left. Shoves.

Steve has the good grace to rock back an inch.

They’re almost the same size now, evenly matched enough that they’re breathing the same air when Bucky eats up that inch and another and another, baring his teeth in Steve’s face with an acid-bright glee burning in his veins.

Steve’s so scared Bucky’s going to leave. Leave him. Completely oblivious to the fact that Bucky wasn’t a good enough man to do that even when he was a good man. That Bucky wants to bury his hands in Steve and dig in so deep Steve’ll finally fucking understand, down in the pulp of his teeth, like Bucky does.

‘Til the end of the line.

“You stupid son of a bitch.” His breath comes back at him hot, smelling like Steve’s aftershave and the one beer Steve had sipped at. He wants to lick the taste of it out of Steve’s mouth, gnash at it, iron and salt and his name signed in blood on Steve’s lips.

“You got somewhere to go, you can take me with you,” Steve grits. Shifts his weight to match when Bucky does, blocking the exit. The immovable goddamn object.

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? No matter what he does, he’s always been taking Steve down with him. Always will be.

He wonders if the boy Steve grew up with would have reveled in that quite as much as he does.

***

_A lead ball of confusion rolls through the target’s skull, tilting his head with the weight of it._

_“No, I guess they wouldn’t.”_

_The target takes a step forward. One. This is the time to react. Target has the strength advantage, but he is faster. He is better trained. The target does not want to hurt him._

_Pull the knife, snap off a chair leg. Abdominal wounds, sealed but tender. Weak points._

_Don’t think, move._

***

Some mornings Bucky wakes up and knows Steve isn’t real.

The odds of them both not only making it out of the war alive, but getting frozen for the better part of a century, and then getting woken up at the same time, nearly the same ages, and finding each other again? Astronomical. Only the fact that they’re both like something out of an old comic makes it plausible, and that’s something to think about too. What are the chances of both of them getting, essentially, superpowers? Of superpowers even being real? Of little Stevie Rogers turning into an honest to goodness Hercules and saving Bucky from the Hydra?

Far more likely that this is all a figment of his imagination. That something they did finally broke his mind and he’s gibbering to himself in a cell somewhere in Germany, play-acting out a world where he gets to sit in Steve’s apartment and eat grilled cheese sandwiches and play the sad puppy so Steve’ll wash his hair for him.

Those days it’s hard to move.

Golden-winged in the sunlight, a gnat meanders through his field of vision, cutting in on the waltzing dust motes. It’s from the mint plant Bucky’s imagined on the windowsill. A few dozen of them that flitter around and hide in the leaves, make Steve tut and complain and look up home remedies on the internet.

Bucky never had much of an eye for details, barely got by on most of his writing assignments in school, but he guesses his brain’s not doing much else nowadays, might as well give Steve a potted plant.

“I was in love with you,” he says. Slurs, maybe. Hard to work up the energy to move his lips just to talk to himself. “Shoulda told you when I could’ve.”

The steady rasp of graphite on paper skids to a stop. Under him the mattress shifts as his conjured Steve inches in closer to his side. “Guess I was afraid you might love me back. Then we’d’ve been in a whole world of trouble.”

It’s quiet, in this place he’s made them, the rush of street noise three stories below like wind against his ears. Somewhere in the distance there’s an alarm sounding and Bucky wonders if it’s real, something happening wherever he is that he’s chosen to believe is a car going off. He’s not too worried about it. Wherever he might be, here’s probably nicer, despite everything. Here’s got Steve.

“I gave you a girl, you know? Real spitfire. Didn’t have the time of day for me.” Warm fingers press against his chin and Bucky doesn’t fight it when they turn his head to look the other direction, straight at Steve’s worried face.

“Oh, you were sweet on her,” he carries on, smiling even though his eyes feel hot and there’s that pressure in his nose like it’s going to leak given half the chance. Steve’s a cracked mirror of the same expression, jagged and distorted at the edges. “Guess I got jealous, cause then I fiddled around with things. Made it so it was just the two of us again.”

A wet, choked noise comes out of Steve’s throat, but he doesn’t look like he noticed it. Like he’s noticing anything at all but Bucky.

“I’m sorry I did that. Always got to be selfish over you, nobody else ever knew what they was missing. And you know I’m rotten at breaking habits.”

Steve’s fingers smell like a schoolhouse, stroking softly over his cheek. Taste like salt when they stray close enough for Bucky to catch them like dirty snowflakes on his tongue.

“I quit smoking, though.” Damp trails across his lips, chin, from those fingertips, not quite not touching him. He enjoys that too, Steve touching him. Imagining it. This Steve who’s strong and healthy and as invulnerable as Bucky wished for a hundred thousand times those nights he was sure every rattling breath would be Steve’s last.

This Steve everybody sees the way Bucky’s always seen him.

Every pump of blood presses sluggishly against the inside of his skin, weighing him down as he tries to sit up. He settles for propping himself on an elbow, close enough to where Steve’s laid out to get his lips against the wetness smudging the corner of Steve’s eye. Lashes flutter at him like butterfly wings. Delicate skin shivering under the faintest touch of his tongue.

“I hope you’re safe,” he whispers, briny tear smeared to nothing against the roof of his mouth. “Getting your medicine. I don’t care how many damn kids the Flannerys have, they don’t need your charity more than you need to breathe.”

Stubborn little punk that he is, Steve’s breath hitches, a hot puff against Bucky’s collarbone.

The sheer size of Steve’s hand curving over his ribs is overwhelming, that strength effortlessly pulling Bucky closer. He’s sort of surprised how big he made Steve; there’s a part of him that always liked Steve being smaller than him, even if he’d hated all the problems that came with it. Then again, if he really wanted to, Bucky could still throw Steve across the room one-handed, so he guesses he gave himself the best of both worlds.

“You gotta find somebody to watch your back. Always getting into trouble on your own.”

The short hairs on the side of Steve’s head are silk-stocking smooth against Bucky’s cheek as Steve drags him closer yet, twisting so they’re pressed together front to front.

Not the way they touch each other, not in years. A pat on the back, or an arm around the shoulders, sure. Hugs, and those nights when frost formed on the insides of the windows and Bucky would curl around Steve like the walls of Jericho.

Not this.

“Bucky,” Steve says, always and forever. “Bucky.”

Bucky relaxes into the phantom heat of him and agrees, “Yeah.”

***

_The target crouches down so they are on eye-level._

_“You know, it just so happens that I know everything there is to know about Bucky Barnes.” He touches two fingers to his temple._

_Backhand strike, chokehold, the pressure of metal fingers until flesh gives. Three moves, target neutralized._

_“If you need a hand sorting things out up there, I could help you figure out what’s real. Heck, I was there for most of it.”_

***

There’s too much blood and tile in Bucky’s head to tell which pieces fit with others. Some of it’s Steve’s, he knows, and some of it’s his. More of it’s neither, and right now that’s what Bucky wants to add to.

Someone made Steve bleed.

Five tidy stitches along the right cheekbone, a bruise already on the green side of healing, red stain in the white of his eye. Three broken fingers, left side, arm cradled against his body by a sling.

Bucky will take whoever did this apart joint by joint, carve them open with their own cracked bones; the wet slurp of flesh separating and the ferrous stench of gore smeared sticky on his face.

Someone made Steve bleed. All he needs is a name.

“Bucky?” Steve’s voice pings around the shower, echoes off of the mirror. Hard surfaces and soft flesh. Like he has said it before, been saying it. The red roar in Bucky’s head mutes.

“Here,” rolls thick off his tongue, then again, this time in English, when Steve’s eyebrow twitches.

The nubbly bathmat is thin enough to let the floor bite into his knees once he sinks down, knocking Steve’s right hand away from it’s fumbling attempts to open the fastenings on his boots.

Someone should have thought of this before they sent him home. At least they got him out of the top half of the uniform, just a simple white t-shirt straining across the contours of his chest and the promising outline of dogtags. One of his, one of Bucky’s, a huge violation of protocol. The only thing they had to give each other except their lives.

Only maybe not. Of all the memories Bucky’s uncovered, the ones like that have proven the least reliable. Fantasies, or just mixups, the over-easy scramble of his brain cobbling their tangled friendship into something else altogether. He’s never thought to check the dogtags before. Unacceptable oversight.

The clamps and laces are unnecessarily complicated, but Bucky can disarm a BLU-82 with a pocket knife, he can manage this. More shocking is that Steve lets him. Just stands there and waits, obediently stepping out of his boots when Bucky taps him on the ankle. Toes out of his own socks, which is more like it, even if his, “I can manage,” sounds half-hearted at best.

Doesn’t do anything to stop Bucky from reaching up to start working him out of the tights. Blessedly simpler than the boots, at least, although still far too complicated for a glorified pair of nylons.

His skin is sticky with sweat underneath. Dirty with the scent of salt and spent gunpowder and the particular, ordinary smell that comes from being six inches away from a guy’s family jewels. The hum in Bucky’s veins insists it smells like sex; every breath feeding the slow, starved flames of vicious need guttering in his stomach.

Bare. No less than Bucky expected, having seen him prance around in the damn things. Still it hits him like a stiletto to the kidneys.

This really isn’t the time.

The material’s softer under his hand than he would have thought. Peels right down Steve’s thighs to reveal a set of thin bruises in the shape of an oblong crescent.

Looking down at him when he glances up to ask, Steve shrugs and says, “Dinobots,” as if that explains a single damn thing.

Bucky gives it a solid minute of consideration before deciding, no, it really fucking doesn’t. “Like, robots shaped like dinosaurs?”

Steve sighs, refreshingly not at Bucky. “Scientists have too much time on their hands.”

Another tap on the ankle and the tights are gone too.

All of the mechanics of Steve’s body are flawless now. Musculature, balance. No more of that bad ear messing around with his equilibrium. One time in… Germany, maybe? Belgium? One time Bucky saw him cross a river on the fraying remains of a rope bridge like a tightrope walker.

His hand is on Bucky’s shoulder anyway, and the pressure of it is forcing the layers in Bucky’s head to peel away from each other, shifting just far enough out of alignment to make the places they don’t match up more obvious.

There’s James Buchanan Barnes, who wants to wedge himself between Steve and a world that seems bent on tearing him apart; who wants to clean him up and tuck him into bed and pet his hair.

The asset, who knows he could sweep the target’s feet out from under him, grind a foot against the injured arm, pin the other, crush the tracheae with a thumb - five moves, target neutralized. Doesn’t want it, has no capacity to want, just knows.

And then there’s the man who isn’t really either of the other two, who wants to press his mouth to the bruises on Steve’s leg and bite, suck, until his teeth are the only ones marked on Steve’s skin; who wants to taste the tang of those stitches and press his cheek into the swollen curve of those broken fingers and make all of those hurts his own. Who thinks, if I don’t get to kill you, nobody does.

The fine, crinkly hairs on Steve’s thigh are tickling his lips before he realizes he may have said some of that out loud. All of that, maybe. Steve’s staring down at him with broken pill-bottle eyes, shattered and laid bare and all in.

Always was a shitty poker player; all in’s the only way he knows how to go.

Bucky’s treated to a sick twinge in his gut at the realization that Steve would let him do it. Anything.

Schoolyard bullies, the government, the Nazis, his own damn body - his whole life, everybody’s been trying to keep Steve in line and none of them have ever managed to put him on a leash for very long.

Bucky controls him just by existing.

The catch of Steve’s breath his like a gunshot ringing off the tile when Bucky stands up.

The head of Steve’s cock carves a warm stripe down the length of his chest, catch-sticking to the cotton of the shirt Bucky stole out of Steve’s drawer. Not hard, but not soft. Harder the longer Bucky looks at it hanging there between the spread of Steve’s legs. Pretty and pink as the flush climbing up to hide behind Steve’s ears. Silken against his lips, he knows. Doesn’t. Should. There shouldn’t be anything about Steve he doesn’t know, not when Steve would give it all to him and more besides.

“You can sleep in the shirt,” he says, listening to the soft slick of the dogtags sliding against each other when he smooths a hand down Steve’s chest.

Steve’s heartbeat skitters against his palm. Bucky’s fingers clench like he could trap it, press divots into heavy muscle until he forces himself to fall back. “We’ll get you cleaned up in the morning.”

***

_“We could get you cleaned up, get you something to eat. You could sleep here, if you want.”_

_The target braces a hand against the floor, slides to his knees. Supplicant._

_Grip the mandible, sharp twist. Two moves, target neutralized._

_He remembers that mouth. Pillow soft and hot. Slick. Saliva and semen glinting with every bob of that throat and tremble of that pulse. Wet, strangled noises. Moans._

_Distraction is unacceptable. They would not have put this in him._

***

There’s a sofa in Steve’s living room that’s about fifteen times more comfortable than most of the places Bucky’s slept in his life. Steve’s never pointed that fact out and Bucky’s not about to move out of Steve’s bed until he has to.

His therapist wouldn’t approve, but he figures that as long as he knows that all the filthy sweet memories of Steve’s body wrapped around him aren’t real, sleeping huddled up against Steve’s side doesn’t count as feeding the delusion.

Which is why he’s hunkered down in a makeshift nest of pillows that smell like a cocktail of Steve and him together when Steve comes in and starts dishing the delusion up a bowl of kibble.

“Let’s give it a shot,” he says, already tugging the hem of his shirt up over his head. Exactly the same tone as when he gave Bucky the go ahead to beat him to death over the Potomac.

“That’s a real turn on, Steve,” Bucky deadpans, valiantly refusing to make eye contact with Steve’s nipples, even with the dogtags - one of his, one of Steve’s; that part was true - waving like a matador’s cape between them. “You sure know how to stroke a guy’s ego.”

“Wasn’t your ego I was offering to stroke.” His face is the color of the star Bucky’s almost managed to scratch off of his metal shoulder, but he doesn’t duck his head or mess with his hair or any of the other nervous tells Bucky’s relearned. He’s looking at Bucky with that stubborn set to his shoulders that landed them both in an awful lot of back alley fights back in the day.

“So what, you spend a couple of years in the twenty first century and you suddenly want to ride a dick?”

“Jeez, Bucky!” The tips of Steve’s ears flush improbably scarlet. “I’d blame those parent controls again if you hadn’t talked like that before television.”

Still doesn’t slow him down, though, because of course it doesn’t; the unstoppable goddamn force. No, instead he’s crawling up the bed on his hands and knees, giving Bucky’s heart a better workout than any of the obstacle courses SHIELD’s put him through lately.

He’s all thick muscle and skin like a newborn - hairless as one too, for reasons that Bucky’s never understood. A better rack than half the girls Bucky used to go out with and these ridges at his hips just above the band of his sweatpants like he’s been carved out of fucking marble.

Bucky’s literally had wet dreams these past few months less graphic than all of that practically climbing into his lap.

“I’m not saying lets run off to Niagara and get hitched,” Steve says, as if he expects Bucky to be able to focus on anything besides the knee Steve just tucked between his legs and how little it would take to arch up and rub himself against it. Steve was always crap at playing fair.

The dogtags tickle a cool line up the center of Bucky’s chest when Steve finally comes to a stop right on top of him. Even with his own thin shirt for a barrier, he can still feel the heat coming off of Steve’s skin, those ridiculous, meaty arms braced on either side of his head. So warm. Bucky can’t remember the last time he really felt warm.

“So what are you saying?” Bucky tests out that grin that had convinced a slew of nice girls out of their panties once upon a time, cocky and a little careless and charming. His mouth doesn’t seem to work quite right for it.

Sober as a judge and twice as sincere, Steve says, “I’m saying I’ve loved you one way or another for longer than most people get to be alive. Adding one more to the list doesn’t seem like such a chore.”

It’s a shitty reasoning. Insulting, really. A half-ass excuse Bucky’s watched Steve pick around the edges of for more than a month, but hey, excuses are normal. And he really has always been selfish when it comes to Steve.

Obviously Steve was expecting more of an argument out of it, given the stunned little grunt he slides onto Bucky’s tongue when Bucky seals their mouths together, vaulting right over chaste on the way to obscene so he’ll know for sure the taste of Steve’s mouth, just in case Steve decides this doesn’t do it for him after all.

Not that Bucky’s about to let that happen. The last time he used his body like this is a hazy wash of color somewhere in the back of his brain, but using himself as a weapon’s familiar, and wearing down the twitchy hesitation that keeps Steve’s hand hovering an inch away from Bucky’s chest is hardly the toughest mission he’s ever thrown himself at.

With a shiver so hard it jiggles the mattress, Steve starts kissing back. Cautious friction from his lips and the soft puff of his breath. One tentative flick of his tongue along the inside of Bucky’s bottom lip that jolts all the way down to Bucky’s toes.

They’ve never done this before.

Of course Bucky knew that. Believed it. Steve wouldn’t have lied to him in the first place, certainly wouldn’t have kept lying all this time. But it was so real in his head, as concrete as any of a dozen memories he’s seen play out on film reels. He knew what Steve would feel like, touch like, the sounds he would make if Bucky stroked a thumb just behind the hinge of his jaw. Only he didn’t, doesn’t. The facade crumbling like wet sand.

He made it up. He made it all up so well he tricked himself into feeling like it was true even knowing full well that it wasn’t.

“Bucky. Bucky, breathe,” Steve says, gentle and commanding. There was a time when Bucky didn’t respond well to orders, but he’s always been good at following Steve.

“Don’t stop. Don’t stop.” Bucky’s panting, black claws of desperation sunk into his tender insides.

Months and months of losing out to a self that is not, entirely, himself; picking up the sea glass pieces of who that person used to be and forever failing to make them measure up. So much time seething at James Buchanan Barnes, who had everything and couldn’t be bothered to notice. Bucky would take him apart if he could; tear him down and bleed the heart out of him for taking it all for granted. Hydra got there first.

But then there’s this. Steve’s hot, slick tongue dragging up Bucky’s neck and the wrought iron muscles of his back flexing under Bucky’s hand.

Something James Buchanan Barnes from Brooklyn never had, something the asset could never have wanted, and he’s getting it.

Steve yelps when Bucky flips him, climbs over top of him, doesn’t flinch for the metal thumb braced against his Adam’s apple.

“You been practicin’ with somebody, Stevie?” has an odd lilt to it, old and worn-in as those boots he had in ‘38, the soles all patched with leftover roofing tar, but colored too dark, too threatening.

Not giving Steve a chance to answer beyond the widening of his eyes - still less than the spread of his pupils - Bucky leans in to snatch another taste of Steve’s bottom lip.

The one advantage, Bucky’s learned, of having done horrendous things; being an asshole pales in comparison.

Steve’s breath shudders out against his mouth and then it’s all teeth and the wet sucking noises, hard and needy and Bucky’s spine is about to curl up and crumble like a used matchstick.

He presses down with his whole body, forces Steve into the stupid, soft mattress he hates as if it’ll swallow them whole if he works at it.

They’re hard, the both of them. Not so novel for Bucky; even with all of his brain chemicals levelling out he still pops wood a couple of times a day. Something to do with the serum, going by how red faced Steve got the time Bucky brought it up and said that ‘seems to be pretty standard’. Which goes a long way toward explaining the mornings he’s woken up with Steve’s little patriot poking him in the back, but maybe not as far as he’d assumed.

The heat of Steve’s hands has slid under his shirt, gripping at his shoulders, metal and not. Dimly Bucky can hear the pistons and servos whirring. A reminder. Neither the asset nor the boy from Brooklyn. Both and more.

Steve groans when the roll of Bucky’s hips finds just the right angle to rub them together. Tugs at Bucky’s shoulder and gasps into his mouth,“This- this feels like more than giving it a shot.”

Bucky catches Steve’s lip between his teeth, letting it pull slowly free. “Sniper.”

The grin perched on his mouth when Steve stops to blink up at him, bug-eyed, doesn’t belong in the 1940s, jagged as all of Bucky’s new edges; that part of him that knows how disassemble a body as easily as a 9mm all mixed in there with the bits that light up like a solar flare when Steve starts laughing.

Control, the thrill of having it, choosing how to use it.

Maybe this is what being a person feels like.

***

_“It’ll be like old times. Just you and me.”_

_The target crawls forward a foot. Another. Close enough to reach out and touch. Does not reach out, does not touch._

_“Never know when to quit,” he says. Thinks he says. There is no one else in the room to have said it. He does not know what he means._

_The target is smiling again._

_Something in his chest twinges. Malfunction._

_“Nope,” the target agrees, “Never did.”_

***

“You want more, don’t you?” Bucky’s breathing is heavy and the graze on his side burns with every movement but it’s the sort of simple physical input he’s been trained to block out in service to the mission. His missions are a lot more fun now that he’s assigning them himself. “Greed’s a mortal sin, Stevie.”

He thrusts forward hard enough that a mouthful of spit and a choking noise are all that squeeze out of Steve.

God, but he’s beautiful. Every muscle taut, trying to work as much as he can even though Bucky’s got his head pinned against the wall by the front door, back a perfect arch, knees spread as wide as he can get them. Wet cock bouncing against his belly every time Bucky draws away just to shove back in again. Wet mouth stretched around Bucky’s dick, right down close to the base.

“Then again, this might be gluttony. Whadda’ya think?”

Big hands tug at Bucky’s hips, trying to get him closer. When he keeps right on with the steady, smooth pace he’s set Steve huffs an irritated breath. Never did have any patience.

Or maybe that was Bucky.

Regardless, it makes them a hell of a pair.

Slowly, Bucky rocks back, eyes glued to the filthy-hot slide of his red cock and Steve’s matching mouth. Lays a hand on top of Steve’s head when he tries to chase after it, fists black leather in gold hair when that’s not enough to get the message across.

The hot-cold huff of Steve gulping in air sends goosebumps skittering all along Bucky’s skin under the suit – the new, improved one, courtesy of the new, improved SHIELD. Co-designed by Steve, and not all that different from the asset’s old one, really, but entirely of his own choosing. He won’t lie, that’s a big part of the appeal of wearing it while they fuck. The other part is how hot under the collar it gets Steve.

Since he’s already got a convenient grip, Bucky nudges Steve’s mouth down to press against his balls, knees threatening to buckle when Steve sucks one in with an eagerness that Bucky’s pretty sure is going to kill him long before some whack-job with a gun gets the chance.

For a guy who spent near-on a hundred years with his virginity intact, Steve’s taken to sex like a duck to water.

The faintly calloused rub of Steve’s palm over the head of his dick is enough to make Bucky whine. He’s not, strictly-speaking, a noisy fuck, but there are certain things that just nail him so hard he can’t hold back and Steve’s pretty much all of them. If most of the neighbors weren’t on Stark’s payroll they’d have probably been asked to move out by now.

Releasing his hold on Steve’s hair, Bucky eases off, giving Steve room to work.

“You left out lust,” Steve gasps, as soon as his mouth is free. Doesn’t leave it that way for long, kissing and licking up the underside of Bucky’s cock before Bucky’s got half a chance to say something smart assed back.

He was so absolutely right to be obsessed with Steve’s mouth all that time.

Instead of taking him back in, though, Steve firms his hand around Bucky’s dick and starts licking at the head instead. Steady rasps of tongue nowhere near as fast as the pace of his hand.

Bucky tucks his left arm behind his back, fingers hooked in his belt just to keep them out of the way. He’s got a bad habit of latching on to things too hard when Steve works him up and right now the only options within reach are Steve and the front door. Honestly Steve would probably be more upset if Bucky busted the door.  

“Y-” All the air in Bucky’s lungs whooshes out at the sensation of the tip of Steve’s tongue prodding at his slit. “You want me to lose it that bad, huh?”

From down on the floor, Steve locks eyes with him, pulls back just enough to let the head of Bucky’s cock rest on the flat of his tongue like the world’s dirtiest peep show. Stripped naked, mouth used, drool staining his chest where the star would be if Bucky hadn’t all but ripped the uniform off of him the minute they got inside; Steve Rogers could conquer the world like this, because Bucky’d do it for him.

Then Steve pulls back, presses the most chaste kiss to the least chaste bit of Bucky’s body and says,“I love you,” all bond salesman sincere. The heat flirting at the pit of Bucky’s stomach catches like matches to jet fuel.

By the time he can think clear enough to actually, you know, think, he’s sunk to his knees between Steve’s, hands petting up and down the hard muscle of Steve’s thighs. Worthless to help with the blur of Steve’s fist pumping his own dick.

Steve’s gasping, sweaty - takes so much to get him to sweat anymore - fucking glistening with the mess Bucky’s made of his face. Come glossing his cheek and chin, lips already licked clean.

There’s an awful lot about Steve that’d probably send the American public into a collective apoplexy, but Bucky’s guessing the how dirty, rough, and with a man he likes his sex would rank pretty high anyway. Everybody seems to forget Steve was an adrenaline junkie before they made up a term for it.

Shoving his pants further down his hips, Bucky kneels up, leans in. Gingerly takes his softening cock in hand and rides the zing of pleasure-pain as he lifts it, putting the goods on display. Steve always did well with a target.

One shaky, wounded little noise and then it’s pure wet heat all over Bucky’s skin..

Sucking in air like a drowning man, Steve slumps back against the wall, head arched back so the thin skin of his throat pulls taut.

The momentary image of that flesh crushed under the shifting plates of Bucky’s metal hand fades almost as fast as it appears, a flashbulb after-image burning hazy in its wake. Intrusive thoughts are considered an acceptable standard deviation according to his therapist. Everyone has intrusive thoughts.

“You’re crazy about me.” Steve’s looking at him from slitted eyes when Bucky focusses back in. Smirking like he won something.

Half of Bucky wants to point out that getting a faceful of your best friend’s come isn’t what most people would call a prize. Even if they did, there’s next to nobody who’d want to pull Bucky out of a Cracker Jack box. The other half’s still too raw to risk Steve realizing those people are right.

Instead he leans back in, licks a stripe through the mess on Steve’s cheek, breathes in the gamey, animal smell of well-used bodies. “You ever wanna get rid of me you’ll have to put me in a grave.”

There’s a part of him - and he can’t tell which version it belongs to anymore, but it’s not a small part - that’s afraid that’s as close as he’ll ever get to outright saying it when it counts. Not nearly close enough for what Steve deserves, and still honest enough to make him nauseous. The taste of rubber before the lightning comes down.

He figures the way he comes like a bullet train to Tokyo every time the words roll off of Steve’s tongue speaks for him pretty well.

Steve arches into him, head tilted to the side like an offer Bucky takes to kiss the bitter, glossy spot marring Steve’s cheekbone, and the bruise underneath it.

“Tried that once,” he flat-out purrs, “Didn’t suit me.”

***

_Warm. The target’s hand is warm on top of his._

_Other people’s hands must be warm. Have been warm. Mammals. Other people have touched him. He does not remember them being warm. He does not remember._

_“Please.” The target’s voice is rusted, chipping. Desperation. This is familiar. On other faces, but familiar. “Please let me help you.”_

***

Bucky lets his head loll against the back of the couch, the television guide scrolling endlessly down the screen. He’s sitting on one end, his feet jammed under Steve’s thigh while Steve does an absolute shit job of pretending he’s not drawing Bucky out of the corner of his eye.

Lashes you could land a 747 on dip down, flame white at the tips where the light catches them, and God, he’s so real.

Could be real, couldn’t he?

How many times had somebody said that Steve would never live to see ten, fifteen, twenty, never make it one more winter, and Steve had proved them wrong every time. If anybody in the world was going to turn up with superpowers, Steve’d manage it purely out of spite.

If anybody in the world deserves it.

He tunes to something that turns out to be a commercial, faint mechanical clicks and hums as his thumb depresses the big ‘select’ button. It wouldn’t take anything at all the keep pressing until all the little plastic bits came apart, crumpled like paper in his hand.

If anybody in the world deserves superpowers, it wouldn’t be Bucky.

What does that say about him, though, if this is what he’s chosen for himself? Less than human. Barely human at all for years, decades. Blood and darkness steeped into his pores, too deep to atone for.

But that wasn’t anything new, was it? He’s picked men off through a scope like birds off a line. Felt good about it. Felt right with a stock in his hand and his gaze down the barrel of a gun long before Zola and the table and... and wherever he is now. Whatever he is now.

“Buck?”

Steve’s sketchbook has fallen closed against his leg, pencil cradled in a limp grip, all of his attention focussed on Bucky. Or Bucky is imagining all of Steve’s attention focussed on him. That wouldn’t be anything new either.

“Bucky,” Steve says again, a crinkle of worry slicing between his eyebrows.

The metal clicks and whirs again as Bucky lifts his arm, stretches his fingers out and curls them in again, a childish, grabby gesture that softens the corners of Steve’s mouth.

Taking it for a suggestion, Steve tucks his sketchbook safely under the couch and then he’s prowling up the length of Bucky’s legs, settling over him warm and heavy and so fucking tangible.

Steve’s hands find their way under his t-shirt easily, soft and smooth like they never were when they were kids. Heals too fast now for calluses. It’s one of those strange details he wonders if he’d have the creativity to come up with, like the way the fingers tracing up his left side leave less of an impression than the ones on the right. Nerve damage. Would he have thought to give himself nerve damage?

Steve rests his forehead against Bucky’s, the faint, clean scent of his aftershave and black coffee on his breath sweeping away everything else. “Bad day?”

You’re too good to be true is jammed up in Bucky’s throat with the shredded pulp of his heart, his next inhale snagging on it on the way down. Bucky shakes his head instead, mumbles, “Tired.”

“You wanna go lay down?” Steve’s hands have worked their way up to cup Bucky’s shoulderblades, fingertips sketching soothing little patterns.

Bucky tips his head slightly, until he can feel Steve’s eyelashes feather against his cheek. It’s not as hard as it could be to force his lips to curve upward. “Am layin’ down.”

Steve huffs like Bucky can’t feel him smiling. “Bed’s roomier.”

Flesh hand creeping down the curve of Steve’s waist to settle on his hip, pull him in just a touch tighter, Bucky says, “Fuck roomy.”

The low rumble of Steve’s laugh rattles through Bucky’s chest

He really is too good to be true.

Bucky’s believed in worse things.

***

_The target is erasing the space between them. The malfunction in his chest is deteriorating._

_They are too evenly matched in a melee. The target will hold back and he will not because he has no training to do so. He will damage the target. Again. And he does not want to- He does not want. He cannot want._

_Exfiltration necessary._

_He moves to stand but the target is in the way. The target’s hands are on his shoulders. The target’s eyes are the same color as his uniform._

_“Bucky,” the target says. Leans in. In. Obliterating the space, the breathing room. The voices in his head that tell him what he needs to do._

_Their foreheads touch._

_One move. Asset neutralized._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come watch me slowly lose my mind over two stupid boys from Brooklyn [on tumblr](http://bewaretheides315.tumblr.com/)


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